Tapirapé are an indigenous people of Brazil who survived the European conquest and subsequent colonization, sustaining the majority of their culture and customs.

[2] Wagley conjectured that the Tapirapé descended from the Tupinamba, who populated part of the Brazilian coast in 1500, since both tribes speak the Tupi language[better source needed].

As the Europeans expanded their control, it was theorized that some Tupinamba fled inland, eventually arriving at a segment of tropical forest 11 degrees latitude south of the equator, close to the Amazon River.

Sporadic contact with European Brazilians started in 1910; they brought iron tools and trade goods.

[4] She returned with a number of examples of Tapirape material culture, housed at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. By 1939, epidemics and skirmishes with neighboring tribes had reduced the population to just 187 in one village, Tapiitawa; by 1953 only 51 remained.

That year, the Little Sisters started their mission among them, and the Brazilian government established a nearby post of the Indian Protection Service.

Each Tapirapé loghouse, hosting four or five families related through maternal links, owned a garden; however, agricultural and hunting products could be shared among people from other houses.

In this ceremony, all men in the village had the opportunity to take a sip of "bad kawi", a drink that produces intense nausea.

The Tapirapé was one of the few indigenous cultures where adult men could engage in egalitarian homosexual relationships without one of them taking on a woman's role.

The reason they gave for this policy was simply economics: given their technology and means of subsistence, they estimated that no man could support and adequately care for more than three children.

[citation needed] The Tapirapé wore no clothing in their daily life; however, the men were covered with a small cone attached to the prepuce.

He then blew smoke on the sick person while performing a massage to make a bad spirit or an object leave the body.

By 1965, the Tapirapé were concentrated in New Village, created by the Brazilian government to protect them, near a trading post; this increased contact with other peoples and furthered cultural influence.

Brazilian music was beginning to be heard at parties, and alcohol became common despite strong protests from the Little Sisters and the Indian Protection officers.

Although the gift system persisted, some men possessed Brazilian bank notes and started to understand their value.